


In Gardens of Blossoming Flowers

by greyskais



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Hanahaki Disease, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 07:05:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11846457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyskais/pseuds/greyskais
Summary: — I ache from the perfumes of spring.





	In Gardens of Blossoming Flowers

  

When he was a child, Wonwoo's parents had saved and managed to afford a trip for the three of them to Japan. It had been his first flight and his first trip overseas. They slept at the house of a friend of his mother's in the town of Kamakura, the paper sliding screens propped open to let any bit of breeze stir through the old house in the spring's early heat. Sometimes they took the train and visited the neon-lit, grey and concrete and sparkling-glass city, went to see temples that all looked the same to Wonwoo's eyes. There was something about the air that smelled different to Korea. The foreign tongue around him flowed like music from the lips of the speakers and dripped into his ears like a cool, soothing balm.

 

The day before they returned to Korea, his mother took him to a garden that dazzled him in green.  

"Look, Wonwoo," his mother said, pointing away from the verdant slopes, burbling streams and whispering leaves, down a clean stone path. "Peonies."

 

The fresh blooms, as big as his head and crowned with luxuriant petals, were the most beautiful things he had ever seen. He took one delicately in hand, afraid to break the flower, and buried his nose in the velvety petals. There was a faint and sweet scent, like nothing he'd smelled before.

 

School started a few days after Wonwoo returned to Korea, filled with a wistfulness and a longing to return, if only in spring again to reclaim that moment of wonder. He tried to tell his temporary seatmate about the flowers. He'd seemed interested by the fact that Wonwoo had gone overseas, but only laughed and told him that flowers were for girls and sissies. Wonwoo had fallen silent and crossed his arms. Perhaps he just needed to see to believe. He never shared that memory again, and over time, he came to forget.  

 

Life had it seasons. Perhaps, like the sun, Junhui had always been there, but hidden by the clouds of those barren winter years where Wonwoo had struggled to keep himself going through the crushing weight of college preparation, his father leaving, and his mother's depression. The day of the final exam was the first time he'd felt like he'd been able to breathe in years.  

 

Then Wonwoo promptly lost his breath when Junhui had walked out of the testing hall into the fading afternoon light. A friend of his slung his arm over his shoulders; he smiled like a flower bloomed, as if nature itself had ordained it, as if it were beautiful for the sake of beauty alone. Wonwoo was transported to another time.

 

A sweet scent washed over him in the breeze. Maybe he'd imagined it.  

 

* * *

 

"Hey, you went to my high school," someone said to Wonwoo, tapping him on the shoulder in his first lecture of university. His mother had wept with joy when he'd gotten his acceptance letter to Sungkyunkwan's engineering program, majoring in electrical engineering. She'd cried in her room, alone, later. Wonwoo turned to look over his shoulder, and that feeling struck him again – it was the boy from _suneung_ , who he'd refused to look for in his yearbook. There was something dangerous about having a person with that sort of power over him, to drag him back into memories he had nothing to do with.  

 

"Yeah," he responded simply, wishing that the boy would take his silence as rejection or insult.

Instead, he smiled that gorgeous smile, revealing straight white teeth. "Yeah, I remember you. You were that kid that tied the _iljjang_ from the year above us into knots when he shit-talked your mom."  

 

Wonwoo flinched. If they hadn't been off campus he would have gotten suspended for sure, for what he did to that senior. He'd still made his mother cry when he'd come home bloody and bruised, and the guilt had eaten at him for weeks.

"Name's Junhui." The boy stuck out a hand for him to shake.

"Wonwoo," he replied.

 

* * *

 

Perhaps the seeds had always been there too, and it had taken Junhui and the spring rain of his mother's tears for them to grow. Junhui rose in the east and set in the west every day, passing light and shadows over Wonwoo’s waking life and reflecting the lunar passage of his dreams. He became a constant, gave him something to turn his face toward when he felt he was growing cold again. His mother was getting worse. Wonwoo had found her sitting in the bathtub drenched in cold water and turning a razor blade over in her hands when he returned home for a weekend. She had woken up and gone to work the next day as if nothing had happened, but he didn’t know what to do. He’d called her when he got back to Seoul, tried to keep her spirits up. Wonwoo got a job at the convenience store near campus and did his best to send money back home. Sometimes it was hard for his mom to get out of bed in the morning.

 

Wonwoo pretended that none of this was happening.

 

Junhui dragged him into his social circle, - Seungcheol, Soonyoung, Jeonghan, Jisoo - those glittering creatures and earth-bound supernovas that were his like kind. Curling an arm around Wonwoo’s shoulders, his warmth scorched through the fabric of Wonwoo’s clothes. Junhui got Wonwoo drunk when he nearly wanted to break from the strain of university and his mother, danced with him in his dorm room to old swing music on vinyls that played on Junhui’s grandmother’s battered turntable. Sometimes he suffered with Wonwoo. They studied together until their noses bled and their eyes burned, wiped their noses and kept studying until their textbooks had drops of blood on the edges and couldn’t be resold without a bit of bleach and a paper towel. Wonwoo held Junhui when he was homesick, the elder’s uneven breaths fluttering against his collarbone.

 

When Junhui couldn’t be there, Jeonghan had a kind word or a soft squeeze of the shoulder for him. Wonwoo appreciated it, but it was not the same.

 

It had seemed both unjust and inevitable that Wonwoo had fallen in love. He kept the knowledge to himself, tucked away in the folds of his deep memory like the image of the eden of flowers that he dearly wished to return to. He hated himself, because he had no time for this business of love when to live was a daily struggle.

 

He didn’t know that there was a peony garden growing within him until Junhui approached him shyly one day, touches soft and hesitant in a way that made Wonwoo’s heart speed up. His whole body lifted with such a lightness of being, before Junhui whispered in his ear.

“Jeonghan,” he whispered, the name tickling Wonwoo’s ear like summer leaves disturbed by a warm breeze, “I asked him if he’d be my boyfriend.”

Junhui buried his face in the back of Wonwoo’s shoulder, and Wonwoo didn’t need words to hear the other man’s answer. The feeling in his chest turned into something more like a storm.

 

He didn’t feel any bitterness towards Jeonghan, not really. Junhui was the kind of person that was easy to love. He had an irresistible energy. Wonwoo sat across from them in the cafeteria during lunch and pretended not to see them linking hands under the table as Junhui leaned his head on Jeonghan’s leather-clad shoulder. Soonyoung ribbed them mercilessly, and Jeonghan broke into a brilliant smile as he reached across the table to swat the younger man’s arm.  Junhui had turned his head towards Jeonghan. Wonwoo’s stomach rolled as Jeonghan dropped a kiss on Junhui’s lips and the younger’s face lit up. He felt like he was going to puke.

 

Wonwoo staggered upright and pushed his chair back with an ugly screech, stammering an excuse and fleeing to the bathroom as an awful, scratching, buffeting feeling roiled in his chest. He barely made into a stall before he collapsed, emptying his guts into the toilet and onto the tiled floor. Wonwoo screwed his eyes shut until there was nothing left for him to expel from his body, dry-heaving as he slumped against the partitioning wall.

 

Scattered in the water and on the floor were petals of a flower whose like he had seen only once before in his life. Wonwoo took a shuddering breath. He’d known his attraction to Junhui had been strong for a long time. He’d fancied it might be something more than liking, but he hadn’t imagined this. He got up and walked back to his dorm room, keeping his face blank, hands in his pockets and stride wide as if nothing were wrong. He couldn’t let anyone know. Not like this.

 

No flower had the right to demand that the sun shine for it and it alone.

 

* * *

 

Wonwoo went home to his mother the weekend after the first attack, without texting Junhui or Jeonghan or any of their friends where he was. It was easier to be by himself. Maybe he could kill the flowers with cold. The seasons were turning again. His mother had stopped being able to go to her job and instead started working for the halmeoni at the _galbitang-jib_ across the street from their apartment. Maybe the summer and the spring had been a fever dream and it had still been winter all this time. He returned to campus on Monday. Wonwoo couldn’t afford having an attack at home where his mother might see it, not when it might tilt the precarious balance in her mind in an unknown direction.

 

He tried to stop hanging out with Junhui after class, but Wonwoo was too weak to do that too. The hurt shading Junhui’s face when he’d brushed him off after Computing, when they both knew their breaks lined up, had him trying to pretend that his self-imposed isolation hadn’t happened. Wonwoo got used to fighting the feeling of the flowers trying to fight their way out of him. He tried to pick at Junhui’s imperfections. He kept an ear on that noisy Boo Seungkwan who was the self-proclaimed engine of Sungkyunkwan’s gossip mill for an ugly rumour that might change his mind about the older man. But Boo Seungkwan was silent on the subject of Wen Junhui, and Junhui’s imperfections served to make him fall deeper into the abyss.

 

The second attack came out of the blue, seizing him as he lay in bed, trying to fall asleep after missing the natural dip in his circadian rhythm. Wonwoo had forgot to set an alarm for bed-time; he’d overshot with studying for his finals. He didn’t have a chance. By the time he was done his bed looked like Valentine’s day gone wrong and Wonwoo felt empty to his soul.

 

The third attack nearly happened in his physics final. Wonwoo’s vision went white with the waves of pain in his chest, but he’d become skilled at suppressing the flowers. He managed to scrape his way to the end of the exam, running from the room as soon as the supervisors gave the green light. Wonwoo shoved past Junhui, who’d been fighting against the movement of the crowd to come to him. His relieved smile turned into a mask of worry. Wonwoo flinched. He wanted to scream at Junhui not to look at him like that - not to worry about him or study with him or care about him or act like he existed. Jeonghan, too, waiting outside the exam room, called out to him when Wonwoo tore past, clutching his chest and throat.

“Wonwoo!”

 

He kept running.

 

Wonwoo crashed into the bathroom, not even sure if it was empty. He tumbled into a stall before the floodgates opened, and he coughed up flowers until his throat burned and his whole body spasmed with the force of the attack. For a dizzy, terrifying second, Wonwoo couldn't breathe. He gagged and vomited up the last of the flowers. His throat felt as if it were being torn by shards of glass.

“Wonwoo? Oh my god,” someone cried, hurrying towards him and kneeling next to his shuddering form. “What happened to you?”

it was plain enough that it was Jeonghan, even through the tears closing Wonwoo’s vision. Jeonghan rubbed his back, comfortingly warm beside him. He took out his phone, distress clear on his face. “How long has this been going on? We need to get you to a doctor, just let me call Jun -”

“No!” he croaked, batting  Jeonghan’s phone out of his hand. “No doctor.”

“Wonwoo,” Jeonghan said urgently, grabbing him by the shoulders and searching his face. “This is _killing_ you. Look at what’s - “

 

“You can’t tell anyone,” Wonwoo whispered urgently. The words burned in his throat. “Promise me.”

Jeonghan was right. He coughed once more, and then - “You need to get the procedure.”

“I can’t afford it,” he rasped.

Jeonghan embraced him, burying his face in Wonwoo’s hair. “Oh, God.”

Wonwoo mouthed against the cashmere of Jeonghan’s sweater that there was none, and prayed that Jeonghan hadn’t felt it.

 

He felt all of a sudden too full from the intrusion of Jeonghan in his life, as if his heart had been stretched to its limits and there was no more love in him left to give, not without eating away at the rest of him. Anyone could tell that Jeonghan was acting different from normal, sitting at Wonwoo’s side rather than gravitating naturally towards Junhui.

 

Junhui could tell. He hadn’t given up on trying to get out of Wonwoo the reason for his flight after their physics final. Wonwoo managed to evade Junhui’s questions for some days. Junhui’s eyes betrayed his worry - and there was fear, as if he didn’t want the truth. He knew that something had changed. Jeonghan cleaving to Wonwoo had made his fears take on a different character.

 

Seeing the hurt in Junhui’s eyes made Wonwoo feel better about himself turning away. It was easier on him if he wasn’t good for Junhui. There would be no reason to keep hope. Perhaps if the hope left, then the feelings, and the flowers, would too.

 

Wonwoo made the decision to put off going home until he had his body under control, but even in his mind the excuse sounded feeble. He had two more attacks in the fortnight following his final. Jeonghan had an eerie sense for when they would occur, and always managed to find him. The other man’s warm hand rubbing circles on his back, running through his hair and tilting up his chin so that he could drink more easily from a proffered tumbler, made him want to die.

 

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, wincing at the strangled, ruined sound of his voice.

“Because you need me to,” Jeonghan replied.

“No,” Wonwoo said, shaking his head. “That’s not it.”

“No, you’re right,” he said, smiling. “I’m doing this because I need to.”

 

Jeonghan had a way of gradually appearing in his life, like a photo negative slowly developing into full colour. Whatever his reasons, Wonwoo came to realise that he depended on Jeonghan’s help as a matter of necessity. Post-physics had become a phase in his life, came to mean something like post-Junhui too, but not until Wonwoo was able to separate from him completely. It wasn’t so easy to change. Wonwoo felt as if he were some green being, chlorophyll from the tips to the toes, suddenly trying to change itself into something that didn’t need sunlight to survive.

 

The third attack post-physics left him shaking and dizzy from lack of oxygen on the floor of his bathroom, slowly freezing and too disoriented to move. His phone was in his pocket. Wonwoo only needed to see straight enough to find Jeonghan’s number, because as much as he needed Junhui, he needed Jeonghan in this moment. Lying on the floor, he realised he was going to die with love in his heart and flowers on his lips, fading and fading until all that was left of him was a faint sweet scent and a damning memory.

 

He blacked out. Jeonghan found him somehow. He had a key now. Wonwoo wasn’t sure where he’d gotten it from, but Jeonghan found him and scooped him up and held him on the sagging sofa, running his fingers through Wonwoo’s hair. He murmured into Wonwoo’s ear until he surfaced, still shivering. His fingernails were slightly blue from being so long on the chill tiles on the bathroom floor.

“I had a best friend until my last year of high school,” Jeonghan said suddenly. “He was then neighbours' kid, only a couple of months difference in age, and we did everything together. I remember he wanted to become the next Pavarotti; he had a beautiful voice and he trained with it so diligently, even when he was still a little kid.”

 

Wonwoo opened his mouth to try and say something, but Jeonghan hushed him.

“Even though we with each other nearly twenty-four seven I never noticed that he had the disease until he collapsed after school one day and puked thorned red roses and blood. I called the ambulance; they did the surgery on him nearly straight away, but the thorns had done too much damage to his vocal cords. He could barely speak, let alone sing, after that. His mother came to visit in the hospital when I was there after the surgery, slapped me across the face and called me a dirty slut, accusing me of ruining her son's future.” Wonwoo clutched at Jeonghan’s shirt. The words cut. What was he trying to accomplish? Did he not think that Wonwoo knew? “He couldn't say a word. Soon after that they moved. I don't know where he is now, but I thought, love is like that. It destroys people's futures and wipes out decades of friendship as carelessly as flowers bloom, by their own will and the light of the sun.”

 

Jeonghan sat him up gently, hands now resting on his shoulders so lightly that they felt like a warm breeze touching him, as if he were glass. Then a sudden warm press against his mouth - Jeonghan drifted back with the last peony petal left from the attack held between his lips. Jeonghan curled his tongue around the feathery pink petal, sucking it into his mouth and closing his eyes in quiet contemplation. Wonwoo flinched. What right did Jeonghan have to find beauty in his suffering?

"Sweet," he murmured, turning the petal over in his mouth, brushing Wonwoo’s cheek with the tips of his fingers. He surged forward, burying his face in Wonwoo's neck. "God, you smell like heaven." He kissed him, licking into his mouth, chasing that cursed sweetness.

“But you love Junhui,” Wonwoo whispered, when he finally pushed Jeonghan away. “You love him.”

“I know you love him too,” Jeonghan said. His eyes were so sad. There was none of the anger, betrayal, that Wonwoo expected. “There’s no one else it can be.”

 

“Then - “ Wonwoo pressed a hand to his throat, trying to gauge if it were another attack or just a lump in his throat to accompany the stinging in his eyes. “Why did you - ?”

“Because I love you,” Jeonghan said. “I’ll get the surgery if you will. Please.” He took a handful of something from his pocket. Gardenia petals, bruised, but still fresh.

“No,” Wonwoo whimpered. “Don’t, Jeonghan.”

“Listen to me,” Jeonghan said. “Listen to me, you beautiful, loyal, loving, selfish fool. I love you.”

 

Jeonghan’s eyes slid past him, and he froze. Wonwoo turned, wriggling from Jeonghan’s gasp. Junhui was there, eyes burning, one hand resting on the doorframe and the other crushing the hem of his jacket.

“How could you,” he bit out.

“Junhui,” Jeonghan said, getting up, but Junhui shoved him aside, gaze fixed on Wonwoo. “This isn’t his fault.”

“I trusted you.” The raw note of pain in Junhui’s voice was nearly too much for Wonwoo. Something in his chest clenched painfully; but he was helpless to move away.

“You need to trust me still that this is nothing like what you think it is,” Jeonghan tried to interrupt, and then they were screaming at each other.

“I _heard_ you!” Junhui accused. “You said you loved him! You said you _love_ him! If you love him then why didn’t you say anything to me, goddamn it?”

“Because I didn’t know, alright? And I couldn’t very well just say it to you, not when I still love you as well, Wen Junhui! Because I _knew_ you were going to be like this! You’re blind,” Jeonghan shouted, “you never open your eyes! And _look_! You can see it in my face and in my voice that I still love you.”

“How?” Junhui howled. He was looking at Wonwoo again, burning into him with his gaze. “I trusted you, I trusted you first. You _knew_ I liked Jeonghan from the start and you still - “

“None of this is his fault!” Jeonghan screamed. “None of this is anyone’s fault except yours for not _seeing_ that he loves you too! He loves you to death!”

 

The fluttering, choking feeling hit him in the chest so fast that he had no chance to run before the flowers were fighting free of his throat; he bent over as his body tried to expel the foreign matter. Wonwoo hated the smell of the flowers. Vomit was supposed to smell sour, but there was only this overwhelming sweetness, dusty and green and cold air all at once, the smell of the natural world and neglect and places where humans never touched. What irony, when Junhui had reached so deep into him, touched him at his core and planted this god-forsaken garden that was killing him from the inside. He choked and vomited peonies until the floor was a carpet of them, delicate pink, luxuriant and fragrant, a welcome rest for his aching head, tattered throat and broken body.

 

* * *

  

Everything was white. Wonwoo thought he’d really died, but heaven wasn’t made of cool polyester sheets and rectangular ceiling tiles and the smell of antiseptic. The first thing he did was feel down the front of his chest for a bandage, stitching, a tell-tale scar, but there was nothing there. To his left, there was an empty chair with a jacket - Junhui’s - draped over it. It was sunset, and the sky was splashed with vivid pinks and yellows.

 

Wonwoo stared out the window, unable to move, thinking slowly. Did his mother know he was in hospital? He hoped whoever had brought him here hadn’t made a fuss. He didn’t want to burden anyone anymore. If he was going like this, then he could make peace with it. Wonwoo could depart quietly, like a pebble slipping into water, making only the tiniest ripple before it sank and the water’s surface returned to what it was before.

“Wonwoo?”

Junhui stood in the doorway. He looked as if he were the one dying, not Wonwoo.

Wonwoo managed a smile. “Hey,” he whispered.

 

Junhui approached gingerly, pulling the chair closer to his bedside with an ugly screech. He wouldn’t look at Wonwoo, playing with a fold in the white sheets.

“Did they…?” Wonwoo rasped. His voice wouldn’t go higher than a shivery whisper. It was the least of the things afflicting him, really.

“No,” Junhui said, though it took him a beat to process Wonwoo’s question. “No, they were waiting for you to wake up so that you could consent to it. They wouldn’t do it unless you asked them to.”

Wonwoo turned onto his left side, facing Junhui, grimacing as the IV line tangled around his arm. “Oh. Okay, then.”

 

Junhui looked at him then. There were deep, bruise-like smudges under his eyes, and Wonwoo realised he had no idea how long he’d been asleep. The garden might have grown some more. Junhui grabbed his left hand, the one without the IV, so hard that the flesh of his hand went white around where Junhui’s fingertips pressed into his skin. There was a wild look about him, still some anger, but mostly incomprehension, that fear from before.

“Why didn’t you _say_ anything? Why didn’t you get the procedure before?” Junhui bowed his head over Wonwoo’s hand, speaking fast, like a prayer to a heathen god who would never be able to answer it. “Jeonghan’s with the doctor now. It’s still early stages for him, but he loves you, he loves you so much and I didn’t understand why he could love you until he told me why, and I think - I think I can only love him more for that. Just having so much love to give, having room for the two of us.”

 

Wonwoo tried to squeeze Junhui’s hand, but the angle was wrong. “I had no right to say anything,” he said softly, reaching over and smoothing Junhui’s hair with his other hand. “You love him. Not me. And - “ (the words burned in his throat) “ - I love you. That’s why I didn’t do anything. Because I only want you to be happy.”

“You have your own right to be happy!” Junhui snapped. He was crying, his face going blotchy with it. “I’m so _angry_ with you, Jeon Wonwoo! You - I don’t know whether you’re selfless or _selfish_ to just keep giving and giving and giving and suffering by yourself and then being so ready to just _die_ and then who’s going to be left behind after you?”

“Don’t cry,” Wonwoo said.

“How could you love me like this?” He was shaking now, forcing the words out between gritted teeth and uneven breaths.

“Why does the sun rise?” Wonwoo replied. “Don’t cry, please.”

 

Junhui cupped his face in both hands and kissed him. Their noses bumped and their teeth clacked and Wonwoo’s mouth tasted like Junhui and spice and the cool sweetness of the flowers was gone for a second, and his body was all heat and light. Then Junhui pulled away, face twisted in anguish. He ran, as Wonwoo tried to call out to him beyond the salt taste on his lips and the crushing feeling in his chest.

 

“Junhui? Junhui!”

Jeonghan looked like he hadn’t slept, either, but his expression softened when he saw Wonwoo’s wet face and reddened mouth.

“Oh, Wonwoo,” he sighed, taking the seat Junhui had just vacated. Absently, his hands moved to brush Wonwoo’s hair from his face, like he was cleaning him up after an attack. “What happened to you?”

Wonwoo smiled ruefully. It was all written on his face.

“It’s over,” he murmured to Jeonghan.

Jeonghan’s face crumpled. “No. No, no, you can’t. Please get the procedure. Please. Otherwise you’ll kill me too. I won’t - “

“Don’t you dare,” Wonwoo hissed. “This is my choice. You have to make your own.”

 

Jeonghan fell silent. The room darkened, until a nurse came by and turned the light on without disturbing either of them. Junhui was god knows where, doing god knows what. Outside the hospital room, the world continued to turn. Traffic swelled and subsided. The _pojangmacha_ across the street filled with workers at the end of their day, wanting respite at the bottom of a bottle of soju.

Wonwoo was tired, but his body wouldn’t let him sleep. A doctor came in, tried to talk him through the procedure, but Wonwoo waved him off before he could start. He’d made his choice. Jeonghan sat at his bedside the whole time, holding Wonwoo’s hand and leaning his head on the edge of the mattress.

“Do you think it goes away if the person you love dies?” Jeonghan whispered. “Do you think it just becomes grief, or are you doomed to die and wither away too?”

 

“No.”

 

Both of them looked up, startled. Junhui had returned. He stepped into the room, striding towards the two of them every more purposefully.

“No, no-one’s dying,” he said. “I can’t lose either of you. I want to _try_. Please.”

“With both of us?” Jeonghan asked. His face was full of painful hope. Junhui’s hand found his shoulder; he bent down to kiss Jeonghan on the cheek, and then the corner of the mouth. Then he took Wonwoo’s hand and kissed the inside of his wrist, his mouth, his temple.

“Yes,” he said. “Both of you.”

 

“Jun - “ Wonwoo tried, but Junhui cut him off.

“I want to be happy with you. I don’t think I _could_ be if you weren’t here. And Jeonghan loves you,” he said. “Please.”

“Do you love me?”

Junhui hesitated, and Wonwoo thought he had all the answer he needed, but the other continued on. “I can,” he resolved. “I know I can. Just give me time.”

Jeonghan gave him a look, as if to say that time was the last thing any of them had.

“Okay,” Wonwoo said, sliding his hand across the sheets to cover Junhui’s. “Let’s try.”

 

* * *

 

Wonwoo was discharged the following day. There was nothing the doctors could do to keep him in hospital when he had no intention of getting the surgery, and no interest in palliative care. Jun drove them all to Wonwoo’s apartment, where he and Jeonghan helped Wonwoo to pack.

 

Jeonghan’s apartment was the largest; Junhui left the two of them there as he raced over to his dorm to grab his essentials, but as Jeonghan puttered around, putting Wonwoo’s toothbrush in the little ceramic holder and his clothes in the closet, it seemed that Junhui’s things had already been partly moved in. Wonwoo rubbed his chest, trying to soothe the familiar stormy feeling. Jeonghan’s arms looped around him from behind, and with his warmth at his back the feeling faded.

 

The three of them slept together in Jeonghan’s bed, Junhui, Wonwoo and Jeonghan. In the beginning, Junhui was stiff and still by Wonwoo’s side. When Jeonghan woke them in the middle of the night, stifling a scratchy cough, Junhui had slotted himself against Wonwoo’s back. He reached over to take Jeonghan’s hand. Wonwoo pulled Jeonghan closer, until his hair tickled Wonwoo’s chin and his fitful coughs subsided against Wonwoo’s neck.

“Love you,” Junhui whispered. “Sleep tight.”

Wonwoo was at a loss as to what to say, but Jeonghan clung tighter and he was so warm between the two of them.

“Love you both,” he murmured.

 

Junhui shook him awake in the morning, dawning pink light painting the bedroom with a dreamy glow. Jeonghan slept peacefully with his hair spread out on the pillow, one arm draped over the edge of the bed. Wonwoo rolled over to face Junhui, who’d sat up with the covers tangled around his waist. The other boy had a feverish look in his eyes, whole frame taut with agitation.  
“Good morning,” Wonwoo whispered, sliding his hand under his cheek. The pink light haloed around Junhui - he seemed otherworldly, but his hands found Wonwoo’s shoulders; Junhui’s fingers pressed solidly into his flesh.

“I thought you were dead.”

Wonwoo frowned. “I’m… not, though.”

“I thought - I dreamed? - you were just lying next to me, and your hands were cold and I couldn’t tell if you were breathing,” Junhui blurted. He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling through his teeth.

“My hands are always cold,” Wonwoo said. “Come back. It’s still early. I’m still here.”

Junhui was reluctant, and only drifted off with the regular movement of Wonwoo’s cold hands running down his back, reassuring him.

 

Things were still hard, but not so hard that any one of them would break. Jeonghan helped Wonwoo to file his academic special consideration forms before doing his own. Junhui would be there, either stiff or hovering over the two of them like a protective mother bird, but Wonwoo contented himself with that presence itself. He had another episode a week after leaving hospital. Jeonghan followed him a few days later, and for the first time Wonwoo was able to be there for him, instead of the other way around.

 

It was easier for Wonwoo to fall in love with Jeonghan than it seemed to be for Junhui to fall in love with him. Wonwoo wouldn’t remember when he fell, the hour or the spot or the feeling or incident that fixed it, but he knew that he had when he kissed the side of Jeonghan’s mouth without thinking, on first waking up in the morning. Jeonghan had just brushed his teeth and there had been a little toothpaste foam on the corner of his mouth. The flavour was something sweet and citrusy. He blinked at Wonwoo for a second, before he blushed to the tips of his ears. He looked so _soft_ that Wonwoo couldn’t resist stealing another kiss. Jeonghan’s hand tangled in his hair. He let Wonwoo manoeuvre him back against the bathroom counter. They stayed like that, just kissing, until Wonwoo realised Jeonghan was mouthing something against his lips.

“I love you,” he said, looking Wonwoo in the eye. Jeonghan glanced at his mouth, but could not stay away from Wonwoo’s eyes. Fearlessly, Jeonghan said, “I love you. I love you.”

“I love you too.” He did.

 

Jeonghan’s hand flew to his mouth; his shoulders rose and he gave a sudden, sharp cough.

“Jeonghan?”

Jeonghan coughed twice, making an awful retching noise, before finally spitting something into his palm. He looked at the thing, and at Wonwoo, with an incredulous smile.

“Look,” he said. It was covered in his saliva, but Jeonghan pushed the thing apart with his fingers, showing a little ball of soft black earth held together by a spiderweb of thin, woody roots - and there, a seed.

 

For a moment, they stared at it in wonder, not moving an inch and barely breathing, placing all their focus on that seed to confirm that it was a real seed, not a figment of their imaginations, not a clotted lump of dirt. Wonwoo pushed the earth aside, digging the seed into a black rim of fertile soil on Jeonghan’s palm, feeling its knobbly surface and raised ridges. Jeonghan stared helplessly at that seed, waiting (expecting, perhaps) for it to disappear – to experience a moment of falling, a falling dream, a dream to wake from and realise that nothing had changed. But it was warm in his palm, and nubbly and significant against the pad of Wonwoo’s finger.

 

It was morning, and the sun laid a hot, bright tract of light across their joined hands and the shape of their bodies, curving towards each other.

 

They planted the seed in an empty pot that Jeonghan had left lying around on the balcony, watered it, and took the plantless pot with them on the train to Wonwoo’s hometown. Wonwoo watched the city flashing by for a time, and then his and Jeonghan’s tangled fingers, and wondered whether his mother would be home – how he’d gotten so lucky – how he’d gotten so selfish, accepting everything Jeonghan had given him without giving anything in return. This otherworldly feeling in the pit of his stomach announced itself as love, but he hardly knew how he understood it. Jeonghan squeezed his hand and leaned his head against Wonwoo’s, and complained that he could hear the younger thinking.

“Why do you love me?” he whispered. It carried the echo of memory.

Jeonghan chuckled, though he really seemed baffled. “Because I do. There doesn’t need to be a reason.”

“Why do I love you?” _Because you make me forget him_. But Wonwoo couldn’t forget Junhui.

“Because you do. But… if you really want a reason why I love you, then it’s because you make me believe that love isn’t what I thought it was.”

 

He started to worry, again, when they approached his mother’s apartment and rang through the intercom. What if she weren’t there? What if she didn’t want him to come and see her in whatever state she was? What if she resented him being so distant from her? She was there, and she was surprised, but she refused to wait for him to come up to her. Wonwoo’s mother ran down three flights of stairs and stepped into the sun to meet him, and _God_ , he’d missed her folding him into her arms as if he were still a child.

 

She pulled away and gripped him by the shoulders, smiling at Wonwoo with gentle and radiant love. Before he’d only seen everything that was hard, and ugly, and suffering, and painful in her. As tired and careworn as his mother seemed to be, there was a strength and a light that he hadn’t seen in her that made him wonder whether it was his shortsightedness that made her seem worse than she was, or whether she was getting better.

“You’re not mad I didn’t tell you I was coming?” he blurted.

His mother smiled, and replied, “How could I be mad? My son has come home to see me.” She noticed Jeonghan then, holding his flowerpot and looking at Wonwoo with undisguised affection. “Who is this? I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t know your name. Wonwoo is a lot like his father was – their mouths are always shut as tightly as clams when it comes to talking about themselves.”

Jeonghan gave a dramatic, scandalised gasp. “I can’t believe you haven’t even mentioned my name to your mother!” He scolded Wonwoo for neglecting his mother – which she gently joined in on – and he resolved to try from now on to be a better son.

 

They moved up into the apartment, his mother and Jeonghan talking easily all the way up the stairs.  Jeonghan was right, really. Perhaps he had been calling his mother, and hearing her speak, but he hadn’t been listening. Perhaps he had been looking at her, but not seeing. Sending money to help with the bill wasn’t the same as sending his love and his trust by trusting her with his problems, too, kept back by his fear and belief that nothing but the most would be enough and so doing nearly nothing at all, and the feeling that it was so shameful that he could do so little to help her. He was tired, he realised, of treading on eggshells. He missed his mother. He wanted to stop seeing himself as her burden, and become her son again.

 

“This is a gardenia,” Wonwoo told her, taking the pot from Jeonghan and placing it on the kitchen counter. “At least, I think it will be. It hasn’t sprouted yet, and I’m not sure about how to care for it, but I’ll look it up when I get home and call you.”

“Thank you,” she said. Maybe it was still not the right time to tell her where the seed had come from, but he found himself reaching across the counter to grab Jeonghan’s hand, filled with the thought that there didn’t need to be a reason – that he didn’t need to justify himself. It was more than a thought. It was like a truth seeping down to his bones.  
“But actually, that’s not why we came today.”

 

Jeonghan didn’t let go of his hand once, not even as they waved goodbye up at Wonwoo’s mother from the street, not even as they took the train. It was a relief that he was there. Being open with his mother had filled Wonwoo right up to the brim with that indescribable feeling of lightness, so much that he was afraid that he would float away with it. The entire day felt like a dream. It was too good.

 

They spilled through the door, kissing and pulling at each other’s shirt collars, hair in their eyes, heat, light and softness, as if nothing else existed. Jeonghan cursed as he backed into the shoe rack. Only Wonwoo’s hands fisted in his shirt prevented him from tipping over. Wonwoo felt that Jeonghan would have laughed, because he was still laughing now.

“God,” Jeonghan gasped. “Are you trying to kill me?”

 

“Where have you been?” Junhui rose from the sofa, shadowed with that same frantic energy that had stifled his usual brightness ever since he had known of Wonwoo’s circumstance. “Wonwoo, where the hell have you been?”

Junhui had been out when they had left. Wonwoo pulled away from Jeonghan, blinking, unsure as to how to respond.

“We went to visit my mother,” he said, slowly.

“You just – went,” Junhui repeated.

The day’s buoyant lightness seemed to vanish all at once. It escaped his body as Wonwoo sighed. “It’s fine. Don’t force yourself. I’m fine, really. Jeonghan coughed up a seed today, did you know that? I didn’t know that you could do that.” He smiled at Junhui. “Don’t worry about me.”

 

“Fuck you,” Junhui breathed. There was a strange look on his face. “Why do you keep saying that? You’re not fine – why aren’t you mad at me? I’m the one who wanted to try but aren’t you the one that loves me? Why don’t you want this _more_ , fuck – goddamn it – I – ” He crumpled, gasping out a sob and a curse and an apology. “I tried – I’m trying and I just… I can’t make myself… I don’t know how to get my head around how… I don’t want you to… You can’t leave me, but I can’t…”

 

He was bursting at the seams. Junhui had been waiting for them for hours, wondering if they were alright, wondering where they were, wondering if they needed him anymore, if he were being left behind. For even longer, he had been wondering if he were doing enough, whether his reasons for his feelings were enough of a justification, unsure of what would save Wonwoo and unable to say more as fear and guilt weighed his tongue.

 

He couldn’t bring any of his sentences to a full stop – it seemed somehow too portentous and terminal and damning, as if his doubt was a selfish thing. Wonwoo knelt by him as Jeonghan’s warmth engulfed him from behind, entangling them both. He had not really been seeing Junhui until now. The cry on his lips tasted sweet and smelled like ozone as Junhui looked at him with desperate, hopeless eyes. Wonwoo had never loved him better. There was truth in his words; a dawning knowledge grounded him.

 

He took Junhui’s hands and pressed his lips to the corner of his mouth, feeling Jeonghan’s lips and tears and whispered adorations against the nape of his neck. “Junhui. I want you to love me too, but only if you love me, not for any other reason than that.” He kissed Junhui’s damp eyelids and the insides of his wrists. “And no matter what happens, I’ll be okay.”

 

He gathered Junhui in his arms. It was enough to have him. However much Junhui loved him already was more than what he needed, and Jeonghan warm and constant was a joyous, inconceivable overflow. However much he needed them and received from them and gave them in return was enough. With an overwhelming torrent of feeling, his body gave up its garden, heavy with the light of hidden flowers.

 

**Author's Note:**

> um yeah so this is just a bunch of me being lowkey mean to wonhuihan and attemping to ~emotion~
> 
> title and summary are taken from pablo neruda's 'love'; the last line references sonnet xvii
> 
> hmu on twitter @moshtothehosh if you wanna chat


End file.
